Rivera must have seen what I had. Not Masrell’s ghost, but the pristine yard, the way Masrell’s house had burned so completely. She must have drawn the connection between the Firestarter Murders and this one.
But even she couldn’t stand up to the town council if they decided I was the one who’d started the fire. What Greta said was gospel truth, and Pastor Keller and Buster had plenty of pull, too. Buster’s lackeys were the kind of people who’d run you over with their trucks if you had a haircut they didn’t like. Mom had always said the town’s opinion of her wasn’t as important as her responsibility to the dead, but this kind of opinion was going to interfere with hunting. If Greta said I was guilty, Addamsville would believe it, and my job would get a whole lot harder.
But Aunt Gretaknew.She knew about Mom, andfirestarters, and ghosts. She was one of the Aberdeen Girls—she knew strange things happened in Addamsville. She’d never been overly friendly to me, never stopped by our trailer, never invited us to their house, at least not since I was really little. And she’d only gotten worse since Mom disappeared.
I’d just have to avoid her while I found the firestarter who did this.
I stopped the Chevelle at the corner and looked back one last time at the burned husk of the house. A man in a white shirt stood among the black char.
5
Iwon’t lie and say I took Chief Rivera’s advice to lay low, because I’m me, and we all know better than that by now.
Happy Hal’s Ice Cream Parlor had risen from the ashes of the old town hall. A bronze statue of Sylvester Hillcroft, the founder of Addamsville, stood at the tip of the jackknife at Valleywine and the Goldmine, the only reminder of the building. All five of the previous Addamsville town council members had died in the old town hall fire, and their spirits were said to wander the premises of Happy Hal’s, searching for the hallways and rooms that no longer existed.
They didn’t wander Happy Hal’s. They stood at the base of the Hillcroft statue, eyeless and glazed red, feeding Bach and Hermit Forester, who had killed them.
From April to October, a red-and-white–striped awning invited customers to come on down and try Hal’s Happy Summer Sundaes. It was a walk-up shop, a semicircle structure with a patio in the front. Customers ate on picnic benches beneath wide striped umbrellas. Four windows looked out along the curving wall of the shop, where employees waited to take orders, the ice cream machines on the countertops behind us. Inside the shop, hanging between the two middle windows, was a bronze bell with a pull string that we called “the Bell of Shame.” It was pulled seldom, and usually by me.
We’d met the end of our season, but tourists are weird about ice cream in cold weather—especially when the ice cream place is supposedly haunted—and business hadn’t slowed yet.
I pulled into the parking lot at 4:58 and yanked on my red polo. The foremost requirement of all Happy Hal’s employees was a striped visor bearing our logo, so I scraped my hair up into a two-toned ponytail and tugged the visor on with a begrudging sigh. I checked that my gloves were securely on, then kicked my way through the employee entrance.
“And she appears—Lady Firestarter herself!”
Hal Haynes III stood at the soft-serve machine, swirling up a large chocolate chip freezie and shooting me a playful grin that saidplease do not hurt me. As usual, even when I wasminutes early, I was still later than everyone else. A short line had formed outside the first window despite the chill in the autumn air, and Madhuri Bakshi was busy taking orders while Hal made the ice cream. Hal turned the freezie upside down to carry it to the window, to show the little boy outside that it wouldn’t fall. The boy looked stunned.
“Ha ha,” I said, moving past both of them to open the second window. “Sales are either going up or down tonight because I’m here, so either you’re welcome or I’m sorry.”
“So many rumors going around,” Mads said, switching places with Hal so he could take the next customer. Her black ponytail swished over the Velcro clasp of her visor. “A lot of vultures circling.”
I slid my window open. “Which vultures? The ones with cameras or the ones with money?”
“The ones with social media accounts,” Mads replied.
A man moved from the end of the first line over to my window. I put on my customer service voice. “Welcome to Happy Hal’s! What can I get for you?”
His eyes went first to my gloved hands resting on the countertop, then to Mads and Hal.
“Uh—can I get two large cookies ’n’ cream freezies?”
“Sure, no problem.”
I lined up next to Mads at the soft-serve machine.
“What did the vultures say?”
“It hardly matters at this point.” Mads shook her head. “It’s out, so—”
“What did they say?”
“That you totally did it,” Hal chimed in cheerily. “That’ll be eight fifty-two. Yeah, Zo, according to the Harrisburg news, the Novaks are some kind of mobster family and they’re getting back at George Masrell for that stuff your dad did, and for you yelling at him. There’s a video.”
I slammed one of the freezie cups down. “Why would we be getting back at him for the Ponzi scheme?We were the ones stealinghismoney!What video is this? Someone show me.”
“Get a smartphone,” Mads said.
“Flip phones still work perfectly fine.”
